A glowing blue slot on your Wii this morning, October 23rd 2008, will indicate the fact that there's a new firmware update to be downloaded.

The update relates to the Wii Shop, where you'll know notice that Wii Points have become Nintendo Points, to bring it in line with the launch of the Nintendo DSi and its new point system, that will allow users to download content onto their handheld. Points won't be transferable between the two consoles, but Nintendo obviously just wanted to avoid confusion by identically labelling the points scheme across both platforms.

There's also a minor aesthetic change with some new icons added to make sure you don't inadvertently purchase items from the shop when you didn't mean to. How very gentlemanly of them.

Included in the most recent titles for Nintendo's virtual console and WiiWare services are Tetris Party, a four player online version of Tetris. Incredible Maze, which is a maze game that sounds far from being 'incredible' and Gradius 2.

Here is the update message that Japanese Wii owners are getting, concerning Wii update 3.4…

On Thursday, 10/23 starting at 7 AM, the Shopping Channel is undergoing maintenance longer than scheduled, and is currently not in service. We apologize for any inconvenience due to this maintenance. With this maintenance, the following changes will be made.

- Wii Points will soon be called Nintendo Points, and all references as such will be updated. All other functionality with Nintendo Points will remain the same.

- The controller usage explanation screen will be updated.

- The controller usage explanation screen will be separated from the purchase screen. Along with this, the user will be prompted to confirm that they have any necessary accessories before being able to press the Purchase button.

- The design of the icons displayed will be updated.

Source: Gaming Age Forums

The Update Will Be Listed Sometime Later Today Either On Our Site Or Go Nintendo Site. So Be Watching For This Update. The Comments From Readers Had Some Fake Listing As To What It Did.

Here Is That Comment.

Scarpine Says:
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:31 pm

Channel Updates
Mii Channel
- Added more types of apparel (i.e. Shirts, shoes, hats and pants, etc)
- Added more types of faces, hairstyles, features, etc
- Ability to create Custom apparel by using images loaded from an SD card
- Ability to collect new items from games that would be automatically added to the Mii channel.

Photo Channel
- Ability to delete images from Photo Channel without having to search for them on the Message Board
- Choose order in which music tracks are played during slideshow
- Ability to arrange order of pictures to be viewed in Slideshow
- Customization of image gallery (allow for user-created folders to manage pictures)
- Ability to change music tracks during a slideshow
- Custom Slideshows
- Playlist support
- Now allow video shortcuts to be placed on Wii itself, so you can view it with your photos

Shop Channel
- Popular games enhanced. Now, you can see what is “Popular this week”, “Popular this month” and ”All-Time Best Sellers”.
- Download Demos. Try out Wii games before they come out.

Data Management / Storage Solutions
- USB Flash Drive support
- USB Hard Drive support
- Support for SD Cards above 2GB
- Ability to load Virtual Console games from an SD card without it residing in the Wii main memory.
- Allow people to merge their save data files as what would be extremely useful in the situation where a friend brings over their save file on an SD card or no longer has their Wii.

General UI updates
- Ability to customize the Wii Main Menu (Select wallpaper, music, animations, size and shape of channels). Incorporated SD Card functionality so you can select to stream music tracks off that media.
- Cleaned up the Wii menu with a single channel for all Virtual Console games, rather than each game having it’s own channel.
- Option to group games together. Keep all the N64 games on one channel or all similar games together.
- Firmware/Software Update History
- Address Book page increase
- The ability to message multiple people in address book at once.
- The ability to send and receive messages via the Wiimote Home button at any time, even during gameplay.
- The option to have the LED stay on constantly while the system is on.
- Ability to adjust gamma correction, vertical screen position, etc. in your screen settings.
- Ability to set the sensor bar settings incrementally.
- Ability to set a boot up password / PIN.
- Ability to lock out the configuration options and save data sections via parental control features.

New Channels
- Instant Messenger Channel - Chat with friends or family members who are online at the same time.
- Media Channel - An update of the Photo Channel where you can listen to MP3s without viewing the pictures.
- NSider Channel - A channel that takes you straight to the Nintendo Forums.
- Nintendo Power Channel - Get special downloads and content from Nintendo Power.
- Achievements Channel - View total play time, which games played, accomplishments, games registered, and other stats.
- Music Channel - Be able to listen to various music tracks from your saved games such as the unlockable Metroid Prime 3 extras. You could configure a jukebox with your favorite music and have it play in the main Wii interface while you use the Message Board or Internet Channel.

Has anyone updated to this new F/W? I got up today and the Wii was blinking and got a message about the new F/W.

I'm concerned since it says "Because unauthorized modifications to save files may impair game play or the Wii console, performing this update will also check for and automatically remove such save files". This says its an update for the Wii Shop Channel

Running a d2Pro9 v4 and wondering if this is going to brick my console....?